PhotoShelter Aims for Position “Between Flickr and Getty”

PhotoShelter, the two-year-old photo archiving and e-commerce company, has introduced a tool that allows Flickr users to easily import their images into a PhotoShelter account, which prevents unauthorized viewing, downloads, and image theft. Approximately 20,000 photographers worldwide subscribe to PhotoShelter’s Personal Archive system, which the company describes as a “business-in-a-box solution” for archiving, distribution, and sales.

The company also runs the PhotoShelter Collection, a marketplace plaform for commercial buyers. “The intent of that was really to sit between Flickr and Getty [Images],” PhotoShelter CEO Allen Murabayashi told us recently. “We heard that a lot of image buyers were going to Flickr to sort of find their inspiration, and then begrudgingly going back to Getty to try to find stuff that they could license, because it was too difficult to contact people on Flickr and try to license.” PhotoShelter gives the photographer an unprecedented 70% of every sale.

What images are selling best? “We’re getting a lot of requests for lifestyle imagery,” said Murabayashi. “I think that’s a perennial need of buyers — to get people doing everyday things.” Image buyers are now looking for less obviously staged photography, he added. “There’s a desire to have things that are slightly more natural. People still want to have relatively good looking people in the photos, but they don’t need supermodels.” So, to all of you enterprising photographers out there, adjust your Craigslist model search postings accordingly and corner the market for “relatively good looking people“!

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